


His Human

by ScripStrel



Series: Michael Mell - Actual Demon [6]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Bondage, Demons, Established Relationship, Fluffy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence, Possessive Behavior, Post-Squip Jeremy Heere, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 15:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19112407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: The moon shines down on a midnight city, crawling with shadows. Something—someone—is missing, and damnit, Michael's going to find it—him—if it's the last thing he does.





	His Human

Shadows danced across ash-licked asphalt. Neon flickered over sludge in the gutter, over a footprinted receipt and a handful of cigarette butts. Sirens rang in the distance as water dripped from a drainage pipe, rippling as it collected on filthy concrete. A scuffed leather boot splashed through, cascading the ringlets into raindrops. 

The figure stomped through the city streets, past traffic lights flashing through green, yellow, red, as a single taxi maneuvered alone. Billboards flickered through their makeup sponsorships and iPhone ads, colored clownish as garish bulbs flashed on every marquis with no one to see except the drunk on the corner and the bleary-eyed corner store shopkeep. The city never slept, but there were times it fell into dreams. 

A chill wind whipped through, ripping plastic bags and cafe napkins through the air. It clawed at his shirt, pressing through the thin cotton, and he longed for his jacket, torn away moments ago. 

Ignoring the ice in his skin, he plodded on, yanking the straps of his gloves taught. The shadows danced around him, spinning in every alleyway like the psychedelic graffiti on soot-slick brickwork. He glared into the darkness. They were out there. They were out there, taunting him, sneering with razor-sharp teeth and distant, wispy snickers. They’d followed him, and he couldn’t have that. 

The city streets were quiet as they’d ever been, and Michael, at a loss for any other options, was going to fight back. 

He dropped all pretense. His disguise melted away, burning into black eyes, curling horns, claws, and bat-like wings. They didn’t work up here, but they didn’t have to. He didn’t need to fly, he just needed to find them and make them give back what they’d taken.

What was  _ his. _

He flashed a fanged grin at the congealing shade in the alley. It lurked in the corners, peeking around a dumpster, and he could taste its reek even over the rotting fruit peels. It stank of heat and sulfur, of everything he’d run away from so long ago. 

And it had  _ followed _ him. 

Michael let his fury gurgle in his throat, ripping past his tongue in a shriek loaded with centuries of pain. Pain he’d caused, pain he’d seen, pain he’d suffered. Centuries of tortured souls—tortured soulless—echoed in his roar as he lunged for the alley. The imp didn’t even have time to cry out before it was being lifted by its throat—or whatever amounted to it—against a spattering of spray paint and grime. 

“Where is he?” Michael growled, voice layered with screams, ringing overtones.

The creature in his grip floundered against the wall, hissing incomprehensible. 

“Where  _ is  _ he?”

Again, no discernable answer. The demon seemed to be crying, begging, clawing at Michael’s glove in hopes of earning its release, but he only pinned it further into the graffiti. Neon green rubbed its way into its unstable form, blurring it into the wall to join the incomprehensible gang lingo. 

“What did you  _ do _ to him?” The blood he didn’t have thundered in Michael’s ears like fire, like a terrible inferno consuming the sky, consuming the earth, consuming the heart he also didn’t have. Fury beat through every sinew in his body, twitching in the claws pressed around the imp’s throat. His breath steamed against his glasses. 

“Nescio! Quaeso!” it sobbed, and Michael’s grip tightened. His free hand itched to grab the knife at his belt. 

“You’re  _ lying.” _

“Obsecro te!”

Fuck it. Michael ripped the knife from its sheath. It shimmered ruby red in the flickering streetlights. Even through his enchanted glove, the hilt stung Michael’s skin. The demon whimpered at the sight of it. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Michael growled, holding the blade up in threat.

“Eleison!”

“But I  _ can _ hurt you.” He touched the tip to the mass of darkness and it hissed in his grasp, writhing and burning. 

“Mons!” it choked.

_ “What _ mountain?”

It went limp as he withdrew the knife. “M-mons cella.”

“Mountain shrine?”

Shaking its head and scraping again at his wrist, it said, “Et mons mercium receptaculum, quaeso!”

Michael dropped it into a heap on the ground, where it lay shivering. “The mountain warehouse.  _ Fuck.” _

Sometime long forgotten, the concrete bunker had done what any normal warehouse should. Some soda company stashed their overflow stock between the reinforced pillars. But then, of course, shady higher-ups turned out shady underlings and pulled the rug out. Or, more specifically, they let loose a legion from the bottom of the pack that gnawed their way up until the corporation was in shambles. No one knew which cult infiltrated the company to destroy it from the inside, but everyone knew that the abandoned warehouse was crawling with the residue of their rituals. 

The building leaked an eerie, otherworldly light. Lovecraftian horror congealed in the shadows of the massive, rectangular tomb, writhing and shrieking. The humans stayed away, wordlessly. Even without rumors of demonic presence, the aura was repulsive. Michael lurked at the tangled chain link gate, fighting the pounding fog in his head. Hell wafted to him on the wind, and while his sanity considered it rotten, instinct growled like hunger in his stomach, and his vision went fuzzy against the sweetness of the sin in the air. 

Michael’s teeth pierced sharp into his tongue as he bit down against the bile in his throat. Somewhere underneath the layer of death, another taste licked the air, like the waft of perfume in a crowd, the tinkling creek beyond the train tracks, the caroling piano underscore of a drunken party. A sliver of light through the choking industrial smog, the sense of it on Michael’s lips like nectar. He shivered and lapped at it, shuddering down to his boots as clarity swept back through his veins. 

_ Here. He was here. _

Michael clenched and unclenched his fists, leather rubbing around his joints. He shoved his glasses further up his nose and squared his shoulders, letting his wings fan out behind him, oozing invisible fire. He ground his boots as he walked, crunching gravel and sand-like glass underfoot. The ruby dagger glittered at his belt, a stoplight-like beacon. A warning. 

_ Stop, or I’ll make you. _

The warehouse door exploded open with the force of his kick, sending a million legionaries’ heads whipping towards him—Or, that’s what it did in his mind’s eye. He stopped short feet from the door, as if slamming into a brick wall. A wall of fear, radiating out like a scream against the decay. 

_ They were hurting him. _

Ice shattered in his ears, snapping his rage and plunging his heart into an arctic chill.  _ They were hurting him, _ and if he charged in… 

If he charged in, they’d panic. They’d rush. Candles tip, knives slip, and Michael’s vision flickered with images of him, sliced open, sobbing, gone in a flicker of breath at the accidental slash of a blade—No. He retched as he scanned the warehouse facade for another option. No war. No inferno. They had what was his, and he was lying helpless in the crossfire. Still, his scream—inaudible as it was—rang in Michael’s being. He needed to get in, but he needed to be careful about it.   

There. A service ladder. Really, Michael thought as he watched his hands grip tight on the rungs, it was lazy of them. Amateur. Especially as he reached the roof and dropped catlike through a shattered dusty skylight onto a blissfully un-patrolled catwalk, with barely a metallic clang as he shifted the soles of his boots against the iron grating. Really, it was like they wanted him to drop in. Heh—drop in. 

No. Not the time for jokes, especially as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and his nose was assaulted with dust and decay. Outside, moonlight flickered through the clouds and the occasional cab headlights sent stark shadows dancing across the shipyard, but here, the only light source was a ring of candles on the warehouse floor several stories beneath him. 

A ring of candles. Fuck. 

He all but launched himself at the catwalk edge, straining to see through the sea of lithe, leathery creatures. Horn points and wing folds glared back at him, but every darkened eye looked to the candles, burning haunted blue-green around an ancient stone altar. Michael knew without seeing that it was carved with centuries-old runes. Runes he'd helped carve, some lifetime ago. He'd seen them etched into the rocks of Hades and inlaid with acid-dripping emeralds. Even from such distance, they shimmered in the candlelight. Across the altar’s polished top lay a human. 

To most, he was unassuming. A normal young man, with tousled brown hair and wide, fearful eyes. Understandable, as a monstrous hooded demon sneered down at him. A dark rag gagged his mouth, stretched tight between his teeth. His chest was exposed, pale and marked by claws. The angry lines stretched thin as his arms reached above his head, bound to the altar. The ropes wound up his arms like vipers, biting into the delicate flesh and snaking around to lash his bare legs in the same way. Tears pooled in his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. They sizzled where they met the stone, and a lurking imp licked at the steam. The human shuddered and whimpered and Michael's chest clenched. To most, he was unassuming. To Michael, he was everything. 

And they'd  _ taken _ him.

Vision awash in red, Michael hurdled over the rail, wings beating frantically to slow his descent. He swooped low over the sea of bodies. Wind whistled in his ears and ripped past his face. He landed on the edge of the altar and stood over the human, who let out a muffled cry, trying and failing to shrink away. Michael knew he was probably taking it too far. His fury radiated out, sparking dark at the edges, and it sent waves of fear across the warehouse, engulfing the human and his assailants. The hooded demon snarled at Michael, holding a sacrificial blade aloft. Michael whipped out his own dagger and knocked the other knife away. 

"Get away from him," he growled, and the demon roared and shoved him. 

Michael toppled into a wall of claws and horns and flesh. They tore at his shirt, pulled at his wings, and slashed into his flesh, but shrunk away when he struck out with his dagger. He stabbed at a goat-like creature, jamming the knife blade in its chest. It howled, shrieking as its form cracked, rent asunder from the inside, boiling like lava until it exploded into a spitting fountain of fire. 

Michael gripped the hilt and sneered. "Alright. Who's next?"

The enchanted dagger was dangerous, he knew. Vaguely, he could feel the way his palm seared against the handle, even though his gloves. Blessed steel, tempered with holy water. It hurt. His hand would be blistered when he stopped to care, but outnumbered like he was, this was his only shot. 

It was too much to ask the army to approach him one by one, but when a single strike could tear apart the creatures of hell, he was more than prepared for the way they charged at him. His skin went up in flames where vicious claws nipped at his arms, and a club-like tail to the face crunched glass and plastic into his nose, sending forth a fountain of ichor. 

Michael gasped through his mouth, teeth stinging and eyes watering. He roared again, lost in the mass of dark bodies that exploded around him one by one. His muscles heaved, seizing and stinging. Cartilage cracked around him as he screwed the dagger between the ribs of a looming bat. 

The human cried out again. Muffled through his gag, but shattering Michael's sanity like glass nonetheless. 

Fuck it. 

Michael drove the dagger into a crack in the concrete floor. 

Nothing happened for a moment. Armor-plated bodies piled up around him, groping at his aching limbs. They tore his crumpled glasses from his face and shredded teeth against his sunburn-raw skin. 

And then the magic seeped into the crack. In the span of three heartbeats, the entire warehouse started thrumming red with holy energy. The demons huddled closer to Michael, away from the walls. A few took flight with harpy screeches, and Michael, with every fiber of his being on fire, screwed his eyes shut. 

The building exploded, Energy rippling across crumbling beams and hissing bats like a tidal wave. Michael's soul (or whatever amounted to it) cried out with the hell beasts, ripped through with heavenly light. The talon-grip on his biceps disintegrated as magma flooded Michael's skeleton, filling him up with rolling agony. He fell to the ground, sobbing. His wings and tail flared with pain. He was an insect caught in a sunbeam, burning alive, a spider under a microwave, being cooked from the inside. 

Far, far away, someone was weeping. The sound of it pricked at the edges of his mind, even as his mouth filled with bitter blood and his eyes streamed boiling prickers. He heard it cold as seeping frost against the impossible desert in his ribcage, splitting with steam. Michael latched onto the sound, clinging to the oasis of awareness. A snowflake against the August heat. Just enough for him to know. 

He wasn't dying. 

But the human might be.

When he was able to open his eyes, Michael couldn't see shit. The whiteness of the reckoning left him snowblind in the pitch-colored warehouse. A ruby-tinted aura leaked around in his breath. The cold sobs continued, somewhere off to his left. 

He blinked, vision sun-spotted but returning. Every cell in his body screamed when he shifted up off the cement. The dagger still speared the ground, its gem-decorated hilt stained with ash. Michael stumbled to his feet, the human's tears pushing him along with a steady crescendo. He wrenched his knife from its stake, his joints protesting against the force and his flesh smarting at the contact. 

The human's whimpers stung Michael like whip lashes, more wrenching than the knife's attack. Something shuffled behind the altar, and Michael's rubbed-raw nerves went electric. Shit. Of course it was too much to ask that it would be that easy.

He didn't have wings. He didn't have horns or claws or a tail. He could see still, shattered glasses unneeded on the floor as the last dregs of his power concentrated in his eyes, and with that sight he caught the flicker of movement within the circle of candles, still glowing toxic turquoise. 

The archdemon was stunned and scalded much like Michael was. Boiling blisters dotted its hide, now free of the protective cloak. Its horns were mangled and twisted, and its face was melting, dripping off around a cracked animal skull, showing gum and tooth and socket. 

Gross. 

The human had given up fighting, and was instead lying limp in his bonds, shivering and weeping. The emaciated demon stood to shadow over him, slimy and scraping. Its dark dagger seeped a cloud of shadows across the room. 

“Ea vera atque simplex via questus quod voles,” it murmured, caressing the edge of the blade along the human’s taught skin without breaking it. “Im 'iens ut amplio vestri mundi etiamsi oportuerit occurrentia devastantem.”

“Hey!” Michael shouted, throat screaming and voice cracking. “Fuck off!”

It sneered up at him, eye sockets dripping with neon light. “Another time, then,” it said. The english fell oddly from the demon’s fangs as it dissolved into darkness. The discarded knife clattered against the altar, grazing the human’s head. He whimpered and Michael found his legs propelling him forward to kneel by his side. 

“You’re okay," he said. "They’re gone. It’s all okay.” 

The human made a choked noise as Michael peeled the gag from his mouth. “Michael.”

“Jeremy.”

“You came.”

Michael’s hand found Jeremy’s, still held above his head. “Of course I did,” he said, massaging a thumb over his palm. “I couldn’t just let them hurt you.” A broken sob passed Jeremy’s lips as he turned his head, curling closer to Michael’s warmth. A sliver of red trickled along his ear. “You’re bleeding.”

Jeremy laughed, tired but relieved. “Yeah, probably. He threw a knife at me.”

Anger bubbled deep in Michael’s gut. “ _ It,” _ he snarled.

“What?” Jeremy asked with furrowed brow.

“That—that  _ thing _ is hellspawn. It’s  _ evil. _ It doesn’t deserve you talking about it like it’s human.” 

Jeremy just looked at him, eyes clear as a summer sky. “Michael,” he said,  _ "you’re  _ a demon. Your eyes are literally pitch black right now. I can hate that guy for trying to sacrifice me, sure, but not because of what he is. I can’t hate demons if I love you.”

He shut his mouth. Jeremy—Jeremy was so good, so forgiving, so  _ human. _ It cooled the fire in his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am now that you’re here,” the human said with a small smile. 

Michael staggered to his feet, giving Jeremy’s hand a squeeze. “We’re gonna get you out of here,” he said, leaning down to capture his lips in a kiss.

“Actually,” Jeremy said when they broke apart, “I wouldn’t mind staying here with you a little longer.”

Michael raised an eyebrow, but Jeremy wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah?” He brushed Jeremy’s bangs out of his face and ran his fingers down his exposed side. His skin was silky soft under his touch. 

Jeremy whined and spasmed, hips bucking. “Please? You—you looked really hot when you were fighting, and—” Michael cut him off with another scalding kiss, straddling him on the altar as he dipped his tongue into Jeremy’s eager mouth. 

“Well,” he said, grinding his hips down and drawing a moan from Jeremy, “it looks like you’re all tied up. And there’s no one around. If you’re sure you want to...” He trailed off as he scraped lips and teeth against Jeremy’s jaw, searing shapes down his neck, his chest, pressing teasing hands along rocking hips and down between quivering legs, where his lips wrapped hot and slick around— 

—Michael closed the laptop with a snap.   

“Are—are you done?” Jeremy asked. “That quickly?”

Michael took off his glasses to rub at his eyes. His boyfriend was perched next to him on his bed. The yellow dorm lights buzzed overhead. Three doors down, music thumped and laughter shrieked where some sophomores were attempting to throw a house party in their semi suite, but, believe it or not, that wasn’t the source of Michael’s creeping migraine. “Jeremy,” he said, “I love you dude, but  _ what the hell _ was that?”

“I—uh.” Jeremy’s weight shifted, the mattress dipping as he squirmed. “Practice?”

Michael ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus  _ Christ, _ for  _ what?”  _ He could feel years coming off his lifespan in the light of Jeremy’s nervous gaze, and last he checked he was essentially immortal. 

“We had this urban fantasy assignment for my creative writing class and I thought—”

“Dude.” Michael stared at him. “Please tell me you didn’t submit that to a teacher.”

Jeremy’s face lit up bright pink. “N-no! I uh—” He cleared his throat. “J-just the first part. And I changed the names.”

Michael raised an eyebrow, unable to bite back a smirk. “Right…” Well that was a relief, at least. “And you know you could’ve just told me you were a kinky bastard instead of writing your own spank bank material?”

Cue a patented Jeremy Heere Mortified Squeaking Noise™ and the pink blush deepening to brick red. “Sh-shut up!”

Michael’s smirk spread into a shit-eating grin. He really did love his stupid human. “By the way,” he said, “your Latin was  _ way  _ off.”

Jeremy pouted at him. “It’s not my fault Google Translate sucks ass. You try finding a word for warehouse in a language that went extinct before they existed.”

Michael was pretty confident that the easiest work-around for that was to just have the fictional demons speak a not-dead language, especially considering they clearly could (Michael himself was example enough of that), but Jeremy was onto something about translation. As Michael looked at him, babbling some half-hearted defense for his shameless self-insertion smut, a candle flickered in his heart. Probably not electric blue, but warm and steady nonetheless. He didn’t have to fight a legion from hell to get Jeremy—he was right here—but he knew from the warm beating in his chest that he totally would. 

But, see, he couldn’t exactly translate that into words, so he just let his grin warm his face and shoved Jeremy off the bed, hiding the squishy feeling under another mousy noise and the resulting roll of laughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Some Latin translations. I did get everything from Google Translate, so bear with it, please.  
> Nesico! Quaeso! = I don’t know! Please!  
> Obsecro te! = I beg you!  
> Eleison! = Have mercy!  
> Est mons mercium receptaculum, quaeso! = The mountain warehouse, please!  
> Ea vera atque simplex via questus quod voles = This is the only way of getting what you want.  
> Im 'iens ut amplio vestri mundi etiamsi oportuerit occurrentia devastantem = I’m going to improve this world, even if I must destroy everything.
> 
> Anyway, this was an adventure. The "archdemon" was kinda meant to be the Squip, but not super explicitly, so I didn't tag it.  
> Michael didn't read the smut because I am not actually Jeremy and wasn't about to write his kinky wish fulfillment, sorry :)  
> I adore feedback, so please feel free to tell me what you think!


End file.
